Sixteen words, published in The Times on March 23, 1820, marked the end of an extraordinary life and a famous love story, which is just about to hit the big screen in Jane Campion's acclaimed film, Bright Star. Based on Andrew Motion's 1997 biography of John Keats, the film dramatises the doomed love affair between the poet and his young Hampstead neighbour, Fanny Brawne.
I went to the London Film Festival premiere on Monday with Sue Brown, who has just published an excellent new biography of Joseph Severn. Severn was the "friend of Keats", who went with the poet to Rome in 1820, on the journey which his friends hoped would save his life (he was also my great-great grandfather; I suppose I should declare an interest).
Keats had little doubt when he left London that he was going to die. Not only had he a medical training, but he'd nursed his brother, Tom, through the same illness. If the fatal symptoms weren't clear enough, he felt that separation from Fanny Brawne would be enough to finish him.
His friends were more optimistic. Severn was an impoverished young artist, and initially saw the trip to Rome - which was financed by other members of Keats's "circle" - as an opportunity to study. Instead he ended up nursing Keats through the last months of his consumption, and finally burying him.
He is gone - he died with the most perfect ease - he seemed to go to sleep. On the 23rd, about 4, the approaches of death came on. "Severn - I - lift me up - I am dying - I shall die easy - don't be frightened - be firm, and thank God it has come!" I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling in his throat, and increased until 11, when he gradually sunk into death - so quiet - that I still thought he slept. I cannot say now - I am broken down from four nights' watching, and no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days since, the body was opened; the lungs were completely gone. The Doctors could not conceive by what means he had lived these two months. I followed his poor body to the grave on Monday ...
J. S.
(Above: Keats on his deathbed, by Joseph Severn: '28 Janry 3 o'clock mng. Drawn to keep me awake - a deadly sweat was on him all this night.')
Unfortunately the Times archivists have no record of who placed the death announcement. Possibly it was Brown or, more likely, it was Keats's former mentor, Leigh Hunt, who had been the centre of the Hampstead group of poets and had a connection with the newspaper as its former theatre reviewer.
It's interesting that the cause is put down as "a decline". Consumption was so little understood at the time that at intervals Keats's doctors believed his problem was indigestion, and nearly killed him with starvation diets. That "a decline" was some kind of euphemism for TB is suggested by another entry in the same death column:
On Sunday last, of a decline, at Richmond, in Surrey, William Walker, aged 17, eldest son of the late William Walker, Esq, of Hayes, and the third victim within the short space of three years of the same disease.
I'd love to know what Andrew Motion made of the film. Campion says that the inspiration for telling the story through Fanny's eyes came from him, but she has undoubtedly taken some filmic liberties. [aha, here it is: Rebel Angel, Andrew Motion's review]
Abbie Cornish is much praised for her performance as Fanny, but she's a good ten years older than Fanny was when she and Keats met, and rather better endowed, both physically and financially. Wentworth Place, the house which the Brawne's shared with Brown and Keats, is positively palatial in the film, and gives no impression of the claustrophic intimacy they really lived in, and which you can clearly see if you visit the real house, now the wonderful Keats Museum in Hampstead.
Anyway, I'm carping. Ben Whishaw is brilliant as Keats, and it's a lovely-looking film which cleverly incorporates into dialogue Keats's own words, from his extraordinary passionate, angry, moving love letters.
A lady next to me sobbed most of the way through and, at one particularly poignant moment (involving a fetching child hugging JK and lisping "I love you"), let out an audible howl.
Joseph Severn, A Life: The Rewards of Friendship, by Sue Brown, is published by Oxford University Press. The launch party, which was held at the newly redecorated Keats Museum, was attended by probably the largest collection of descendants of the Keats Circle since the originals gathered there 190 years ago - including direct descendants of Charles Brown, who came from New Zealand and France, a descendant of Keats's sister, Fanny, and several great great grandchildren of Joseph Severn (including my sister and me).
I saw Bright Star, which led me on to several biographies, two volumes of his letters, and Stanley Plumley's book. I want to look for the book on your great-great-grandfather. I think people unfairly dismiss him as a light-weight. I am amazed, every time I read the account of Keat's death, by Severn's strength and courage and goodness. He has become one of may favorite people in history.
Posted by: Jessica Allen | Saturday, April 03, 2010 at 19:40